 "It has taken 69 years for New Zealand to win their first Test series in India, and they achieved it with a carefully crafted attacking brand of cricket. AP")
For decades, teams have come to India and tried to ape India’s brand of cricket, with limited to no success. They often sacrificed their strengths and tried in vain to ape the Indian style, without possessing the necessary skill or the personnel to do so. For a while, South Africa bucked the trend, relying on their strength – fast bowling – and reaped the benefits, including a 2-0 sweep in early 2000 in Sachin Tendulkar’s last series as Indian captain, but most others, including powerhouses Australia and England, have fallen into the trap of going the Indian way.
The greatest compliment to Tom Latham’s intrepid bunch is that they forced India to try to imitate their approach, their methodology, their gameplans – their brand, in short.
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New Zealand’s winning 2-0 series lead hasn’t come about by accident. Their preparation heading into India, on the back of a 0-2 loss in Sri Lanka, was meticulous and smart. In the past, they had allowed themselves to be cowed down by India’s aggression and their propensity to get on the front foot. They arrived this time determined, as Latham put it, to fire the ‘first shot’ and see how it went from there.
Attacking batting, disciplined bowling help the Kiwis
That manifested itself in attacking batsmanship. Not on a wing and a prayer, but through carefully crafted plans. Involving sweeps and reverse sweeps to throw the spinners off their rhythm. To create niggling doubts and irritating conundrums. To open up gaps through the deployment of fielders away from close-in, catching positions. To then work the gaps, keep the board moving, to prevent the ennui and static passages that invite pressure and lead to addled decision-making.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThat also manifested itself in bowling ideologies steeped in simplicity. Such as relentlessly attacking the stumps and bowling straight on a pitch like the one on offer in Pune, where from the same spot, one delivery jumped and turned sharply and another skidded through straight. They used an experienced limited-overs expert to exploit that assistance, and because the said individual is tall, smart, relentless and intelligent, they prevented India from adopting the same batting parameters that the Kiwis themselves excelled in.
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Their batting had many heroes over the first two Tests. Devon Conway. The impressive Rachin Ravindra. The feisty skipper himself. The pesky Glenn Phillips. The seasoned pro, Tim Southee. Their bowling, versatile as it is, was brilliantly spearheaded by pacers Matt Henry and rookie William O’Rourke in Bengaluru in the first Test when they operated in almost New Zealand-like conditions, and outstandingly well in Pune by Mitchell Santner, whose 13-wicket haul eventually was the difference between the teams.
Latham and Co benefit from derring-do attitude
India tried to push back, they tried to counter New Zealand’s plans, which weren’t so devious or diabolical as to not be openly obvious. But they weren’t allowed to do their bidding by New Zealand’s propensity to absorb pressure, to ride the punches, and to not panic during the little passages when they were pushed onto the backfoot. New Zealand almost came with a derring-do attitude. Being timid and limpid hadn’t yielded results for 69 years and 13 series. Why not change things around and at least see what an altered, positive, attacking mindset could do?
It helped, too, that New Zealand lost a toss that mattered and won another one that mattered as much. Latham admitted that had he won the toss in Bengaluru, despite overcast skies and a damp surface that had sweated under the covers for three days, he too would have batted first. He was over the moon when he called wrong, Rohit Sharma chose to bat and India were shot out for 46, their third-lowest Test score . What story would we have had to tell had he called right? Where would the series be sitting right now?
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In Pune where batting first was a no-brainer, given the conditions, Latham got it right at toss. It didn’t guarantee victory but imagine facing up to R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja after India’s batters had made first use of the track, when it would have been at its best for batting and posted 300. Or even New Zealand’s 259. Would we still be writing about the Kiwis sitting on a 2-0 lead, about them having created history by consigning India to their first series loss at home since 2012-13, about them snapping an 18-series winning run? Hypotheticals, hypotheticals all…
Make no mistake, New Zealand aren’t series winners merely because they won a toss they needed to and lost one that they were better off losing. They have played the smarter, more enterprising, less error-prone cricket. They have done so almost unobtrusively, with a nick here, a little cut there, rather than an explosive one-two combination that has left India on the floor. They have bled India dry softly, almost apologetically, but with a steel that is quintessentially Kiwi. They have forced their famed opponents to seek recourse in the sweep and the paddle and the reverse sweep, strokes that don’t come naturally except perhaps to the newest set of batters that have grown up in a sea of T20 innovations when they are at their most comfortable targeting areas in front of square and down the ground. They have compelled India to go against their natural grain by cutting out the frills.
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Is this the template to beard the Indian lion in its own den? Perhaps so. But will more teams have the conviction to keep doing so, especially if there is a sustained counter? Will they possess the resources to stick to that blueprint? Are Tom Latham’s bunch the first of many to go where no one has for a dozen years? Or are they just an aberration, not trend-setters and path-showers? Only time will tell.